


Cultivate your own damn self

by Aesoleucian



Series: Black Noodle Incidents [1]
Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Everyone lives, Existential Dread, F/F, Gen, Post-Series, Vacation Planet, emperor heist, some people live twice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-29
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-12-08 14:48:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11648817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aesoleucian/pseuds/Aesoleucian
Summary: Cass escapes the paparazzi, runs away to vacation planet, and then realizes that vacations are not supposed to be forever.





	Cultivate your own damn self

In deep space, somewhere between Tetrakal and the former location of September, a seed formed, far away from the collective thought that watered its ashes after the fire. It only took about three months before what was inside woke, confused.

Cassander squinted open their eyes inside a moving statue (not currently moving), and flicked two of their fingers to check the time and date, almost automatically. When nothing came, they leaned over (having woken in an upright position due to… the piloting rig?) and dug the knuckles of their thumbs into their eyes.

It took only a day to make it to Archonic when they finally realized where they were—Apokine’s navigation was working, even if its clock wasn’t, and what self-respecting civilization would design a god-mech without an FTL drive? There they sat in a café for an entire business day in the stupid fucking toga they’d regenerated in, staring determinedly at the TV in the corner, trying to infer _everything_ that had happened since they died.

When they occasionally looked down at their hands during commercial breaks, to stare into their shitty space coffee (bought with stolen small coin), they noticed newly every time that all their scars were gone.

At closing time they took one sip of their very cold, very stale space coffee and dropped it into the trash, where it vaporized. ( _Hm. A weird feeling._ ) And they left.

They slept upright in Apokine that night (a reduced version, about the size of Megalophile, because they could only suppose it would have taken much longer to generate its full size) and woke with an aching neck. When they tried to pickpocket a rich-looking woman the next day, she spun around and said, “Holy shit, are you Cassander Berenice?”

“Yes?” they said, wondering what they were being accused of.

“Holy shit,” she said again. “Let me take you to breakfast.”

Cassander was not one to pass up a free breakfast, so they let her take them to a restaurant and buy them as much meat pastry as they could possibly fit into their stomach and pockets. They sat facing the TV again, too distracted to process most of the woman’s questions. “Hey. Hey! Are you listening?” They looked down again, blinking dazedly, and tried to rearrange their face into something politely inquisitive. They had a feeling they’d just landed on _dopey_. “What’s your _deal_?”

“My deal,” said Cassander.

“Like how you threw an entire planet into the sun and died and now you’re fine?”

“Oh.” They found their eyes drifting to the TV, and pulled them down again, because this required actual concentration. “I think I was reborn. And Apokine.”

The woman stared at them for a moment, and then seemed to become suddenly embarrassed by making eye contact. She looked down and started tapping on her wrist holoscreen. Cassander looked back up at the TV, wondering how they were going to escape her. They should probably make their way to Counterweight, where probably at least Orth Godlove still lived. If they remembered right Aria would be on Vox, Mako on Ziishe or something (maybe an orbiting station?), and AuDy—

Well, Orth would be on Counterweight. Maybe AuDy too.

 

It didn’t work out that way. Instead they found themself, a week later, on Apostolos, being alternately hailed as a hero/god and hearing whispers that they staged their death and dramatic return _in order_ to be hailed as a hero/god. Of course, it wasn’t long before someone had organized an interview that would be broadcast to the entire sector. It was probably their duty to appear on the broadcast, but frankly they were getting sick of duty. They’d been mistaken for a devotee of Apoanta often enough by now that they were beginning to see the attraction. They should have filed those papers years ago, probably. Sounded a lot nicer than Apole right now.

“Some are calling for you to renew the empire and lead it as Apokine,” said the interviewer, leaning forward. “What are your feelings on that idea?”

Cassander kept their face contemptuously blank. “My siblings didn’t die for the Demarchy so I could reinstate the Empire. Frankly I have no interest in leadership. I wasn’t even expecting to be alive right now.”

Later they saw on the news that their very existence was splitting the Apostolosian people, and they considered killing themself to make sure everyone could trust the Demarchy. But on second thought, fuck that, they’d already died once and it fucking sucked.

Could they _fake_ their death convincingly?

Until such a time as they could competently fake their death, they found themself trapped in an endless wheel of galas and dinners, trying to be just rude enough that nobody would want to talk to them but not so rude someone would call security. They didn’t really have it in them, as it turned out. Bred for politeness from the age of zero. So it was a blur of gold and white and wine, and the voices saying _be our Apokine_ or _disappear, scum_ got louder and louder until a hand laid itself delicately on their shoulder and a familiar voice said, “Can I have this dance?”

The world became somewhat more real, or at least that part of it occupied by Aria Joie. Cassander sighed and let their head sag for a moment. “Fuck yes. What took you so long?”

“Some of us have jobs other than going to parties and appearing on TV, Cass.”

Nobody had called them Cass for… since the last time they had spoken to Aria. It occurred to them that that conversation might have been a little uncomfortable for her. At the time they hadn’t cared: they were dying, it wasn’t their problem.

“Sorry,” they said. “Not for going to parties, although I’m sorry for that too. I mean, for everything.”

“I think you’ve been punished long enough,” said Aria, with her most charming smile. Oh thank fuck, she was up to something. “Would you care to take the night air with me?”

They let her lead them out to the balcony, and smiled out at the beach as she glared at the couple who were already out here until they left. “Ah, now we’re finally alone,” she said happily. They glanced over to find her hiking up her dress to tuck it into the waistband of a pair of gray leggings. “Come on, Cass, you’re never going to make a great escape in a dress like that!”

“I didn’t pick it,” they said, unable to fight back a smile. “I don’t mind if it gets ruined.”

And so, about twenty minutes later, Cassander found themself in a speedboat piloted by Jacqui Green, taking them swiftly in the opposite direction of the party where they might or might not be missed any moment now.  And their dress was ruined, but in kind of a fetching way, they thought. “It’s a pleasure to see you again, Ms Green,” they said, relaxing against the side of the boat.

Jacqui turned to give them half a smile and flashed a new bracelet at them. “It’s Green-Joie now,” she said.

“And you’d better start calling me Aria Joie-Green!”

“She insisted that we use our honeymoon leave to rescue you,” Jacqui explained. “I was going to leave you to rot but I think she misses fencing.”

“Shut up, Jacqui,” said Aria, grinning and punching her wife in the shoulder. She used her metal hand, so that through her glove it produced a muted _clank_.

Cassander looked away toward the stern of the boat and blinked hard, trying to get rid of tears whose origin they didn’t understand.

 

Aria had said she was taking them to a “secret vacation planet,” which just turned out to be Glimmer. It only worked because they stole an Apostolosian ship, which was fine, Aria said, because she wasn’t on the clock right now. Cassander hadn’t been to Glimmer for fifteen years (had never been here, that was _Addax_ ) but it was just as beautiful as they remembered, at least from space. The colonies on this world were sufficiently sparse that there was more than enough wilderness to get lost in, so Cassander commandeered some repair drones to build a house on a beach that perhaps no-one else had ever set foot on. For about a month there was fencing with Aria and hand-to-hand sparring with Jacqui and teaching them to fish and reconfiguring drones to turn local plant life into food. And then the Green-Joies had to leave, because unlike Cassander they had actual jobs.

Cassander did a lot of diving after they left. At first Glimmer’s ocean stung and tasted strange in their gills after the carefully measured saline they’d been breathing since they were born. But it was easy to get used to. It tasted like freedom. They might have just moved to the ocean permanently if they didn’t have to _sleep_. Sleeping in the ocean, they had found on one occasion, was extremely dangerous. They’d woken half-paralyzed by some sort of stinging creature and barely made it back up onto the continental shelf. It had taken three days to drag themself home.

Still, it was nice to have scars again.

A few months later Mako dropped in unexpectedly; he told Cassander that the Rapid Evening and the Vanguard were technically kind of enemies, but he was nothing if not annoying enough to make Aria give up information he wanted. He wasn’t like Cassander remembered, though. Even before his entire clone family and maybe-husband had died fighting Rigor, he hadn’t quite been the Chime’s goofy fast-talking kid—but now he seemed both twitchy and deeply tired. Said he could hear the hum of circular saws, _honest_ , I’m not making this up. Told Cassander that Jace said hi, apparently without realizing that Jace and Cassander had never met. Mako still chattered nervously, but he was worse at it, and eventually he gave up and was just quiet.

After about a week he started talking again, and sounded a little more like his old self. Then abruptly he got a call one day and said tersely, “I’ve got to take this.” He left the house—for privacy, Cassander thought at the time—and didn’t come back. Cassander spent that night waiting for him to come back, and the following day at the foot of the continental shelf, wondering if they should offer their services as a doctor to one of the settlements on the other side of the planet. If they swam, it would only take a few months to get there, and their drones could be programmed to follow them along the shore.

They left a note at the door of their house, encrypted to Aria’s private key, saying where they had gone. If Mako found it, they were sure, he would be able to decrypt it too.

A few months later Cassander rather startled a group of fishermen as they walked out of the sea with their luggage, slapping on gill protectors and stumbling heavily under their own full weight. “Hi,” they said, “what town are you from?” It wasn’t, perhaps, the politest way to declare their intention to move in, but they hadn’t spoken to another person since Mako disappeared four months ago, so their social skills were a little rusty. And Mako wasn’t exactly the perfect conversational partner for polishing social skills anyway.

The fishermen, after recovering from their surprise (and they had no reason to love Apostolosians),  were polite enough, and they said no-one would mind if Cassander built a house a little way outside of the town of Plaidest.

 

It was fine. Nobody came to see them, but it was just as well because amassing surgical tools was slow. They did make sure to buy what tools they could _ostentatiously_ , to make sure everyone knew their services were available. They did make sure to be polite and friendly when trading for vegetables on market day (deconstructed-reconstructed shoregrass just wasn’t the same at all) but still no-one came. Eventually they started diving for fish and pearls as their main profession, with tubes of antibiotics and sterilized scalpels getting dusty on the shelves in their house.

But still Cassander carried a first aid kit hidden as an embarrassment under their coat when they went into town, and it paid off when they were able to help set a fisherman’s broken arm so he could safely bring his boat back in. The next week one of Plaidest’s mothers brought her three coughing children in, and Cassander didn’t have the heart to explain that they were a surgeon, not a pharmacist. It worked out, anyway, because bed rest and plenty of water was an easy prescription to give.

Business picked up from there, and people started paying Cassander in vegetables, which was exactly how they liked it. They finally reperfected their squid ink pasta (although they had to use mauve sea hare ink instead, which made it look rather odd) and were able to incorporate local vegetables. It was a stupid thing to be proud of, but on the day they finally invited a few neighbors over for dinner the dish went over well. They sat on the back step afterward, filled with the glow of throwing their first ever house party without servants doing almost one hundred per cent of the work, watching the gibbous moon rising over the ocean. Maybe having friends wasn’t complete bullshit after all, like they’d sometimes thought in the months after Aria and Jacqui left. Cassander still wished they’d visit, though.

Through the open back door they heard someone knocking in the front, and got up to answer, walking past piles of dishes they hadn’t even started to soak yet. Could be that someone had forgotten their coat, or maybe someone needed a doctor. But when they opened the door the person standing there wasn’t a person at all. It was—

An Automated Dynamics parking robot, obsolete these four years. Not the one they remembered, though.

“Can I help you?” asked Cassander. Their gut was fluttering or burning or just plain rebelling. They _knew_ AuDy had been destroyed the same day they themself died. And that had been Discovery, anyway.

There was a long pause, and then the robot said, “This is Automated Dynamics.”

“Yeah, I can see that. It’s on your front screen.”

The robot managed to mangle some speech file into a pieced-together sigh that was so familiar they could hardly doubt it. “Cassander.”

“I, uh, I thought you were dead,” said Cassander. They didn’t move from the doorway to let the robot come in. They couldn’t, right now.

“You were dead,” said the robot. “I may have been, as well.”

“So… who is this? I mean, are you AuDy, or Discovery?” Finally, Cassander managed to step aside, gesturing weakly for the robot to come in. They did, and followed Cassander into the dark living room where they fumbled for the lights.

“Both,” said AuDy/Discovery. “In this body, though, there’s only AuDy. Discovery prefers places with reliable Mesh access to do its work.”

“Are you telling me you infected Discovery with your AuDy priorities and then kicked it out of your body?” asked Cassander, amused.

“Of course not. I had a new body manufactured and copied myself into it, sans Discovery.”

Cassander didn’t ask why, because AuDy wasn’t likely to admit something like _I wanted my own body for a specific purpose_ anyway. Instead they said, “It isn’t like you to come all the way to Glimmer just to visit me.”

Cassander was expecting AuDy to agree and say that they needed help with something, but they didn’t. They were silent for a good three minutes, until Cassander got up and started on the dishes, in defeat. When they looked over, halfway through scrubbing out the large inky serving bowl, AuDy’s lights were all off. They’d gone into standby mode, which usually meant they were trying to avoid answering a question they found awkward. “Real mature,” Cassander told them, out loud. “Well, if you ever want to come out from under your rock I’ll be… probably asleep. Night, AuDy.”

 

In the morning AuDy was on the back step facing out toward the ocean, although as far as Cassander understood they had cameras pointing four different directions. “Good morning, AuDy,” Cassander said.

“Good morning,” said AuDy. There was another awkward silence, somewhat alleviated by the shushing of the waves.

“Is there anything I can _get you_?” asked Cassander. “Like, I know you don’t eat and maybe you don’t get bored either, and, don’t get me wrong, I don’t _mind_ having you sitting silently in my house. I just feel like kind of a shitty host.”

“No,” said AuDy.

“I’m going to buy you a new vest,” said Cassander. “Maybe some new shades. Do you mind if I take all my clothes off? I’m going to catch breakfast.”

“No,” said AuDy.

“Great.” Cassander retreated behind the doorway to strip, trying and failing not to feel awkward about AuDy being here. Theoretically robots didn’t care at all about humanoid nakedness, but AuDy might have picked something up from living with the Chime for so long. Cassander desperately wished they could turn back time and not say that, just go swimming in their clothes, but now they were committed. At least AuDy was easy to ignore, by virtue of being silent and completely still.

Still… it was unnerving, not knowing why they were here. As long as Cassander had known them, AuDy had been very clear about what their goals were, even if they lied flagrantly and constantly about their methods. Right now it felt like Cassander was missing something extremely important. They decided to let after-breakfast Cassander worry about that, and allowed themself to think of nothing but hunting.

When they got back, AuDy wasn’t immediately visible, so Cassander relaxed enough to go to their room and get clothes that would be appropriate if anyone came by and needed them. They heard AuDy’s heavy footsteps on the wood floor outside, and poked their head out to see AuDy walking toward the kitchen. AuDy turned—a matter of courtesy, since they could see Cassander no matter where they were pointing—attentively to face them.

“Hey,” said Cassander weakly. “What’s up?”

“I’m a smuggler,” said AuDy. “I’m going to return to my ship now. Do you have any requests?”

“Uh? Um, better surgical tools, I guess, these are kind of shit. Maybe some spices?”

“All right,” said AuDy, and turned to walk out the door.

“Uh, can I get some kind of ETA? So I know when to expect you back?”

“Probably a couple of months.”

AuDy left. Cassander stood staring bemusedly after them for a few minutes, but they couldn’t stand there forever. There were still dishes to deal with, from last night, and they’d planned to go diving today.

They sighed. Cryptic as ever.

 

The next time AuDy turned up it was just as unexpected and inconvenient as the first time. If not moreso. Cassander was in their makeshift operating theater (just a normal room of their house, but tiled so it could be sterilized) removing venomous quills from a fisherman’s arm, when they heard a knock at the front door. “Come in and sit down,” they called, “I’ll get to you later.” They would have just gone back to concentrating, except that AuDy’s footsteps were unmistakable, always had been. Cassander almost dropped the quill they were holding in their tweezers, and cursed, before recovering enough to put it in the toxin analyzer. “Right, I have an antidote for this, so don’t worry. Do you want that before or after I get rid of the rest of the quills?”

“Before,” said the fisherman, grimacing. “What good is getting ‘em out if I still die of poison?”

“Right,” Cassander murmured. “Just a second.” They wouldn’t have _asked_ if there was any chance of her dying before they finished.  “There you are, if you experience any numbness or paralysis in the next week you should come back and see me. Ready? Out. And the last one… There. If you experience numbness or paralysis _after_ that it’s probably for a different reason, but you can still come see me. I’m going to put antibiotic on this even though I don’t think you need it. Don’t take off the bandage until the skin is closed up.”

“Thanks, Doc,” said the fisherman, grinning. “I’ll send my girl by with something for you later.”

Cassander followed her out into the living room, absently wiping the blood off their tweezers, and then abruptly remembered that AuDy was sitting on the mat, not even touching the cushions Cassander had gotten last year in return for saving someone’s mangled leg. “Hey, AuDy,” they said. The fisherman gave them a curious look over her shoulder, but didn’t say anything as she left.

“Cassander,” said AuDy in acknowledgment. “I brought what you requested.”

“Thanks,” said Cassander. “I’m going to finish cleaning up in the operating room.” AuDy followed them and stood in the doorway, more imposing in their silence than they should be, considering that they were a full foot shorter than Cassander and had no head. “So, you got a new ship, right?”

“I did.”

“Can I get a tour when I’m done here? You got any crew?”

“Yes,” said AuDy. “One still generally needs mech pilots in order to be a successful smuggler.”

“And you just left them hanging around on your ship while you came to deliver me some scalpels,” said Cassander, trying not to feel _replaced_ —trying also not to feel weirdly angry that AuDy was treating their crew like that.

“They seem to think Plaidest is a decent place for shore leave,” said AuDy.

Cassander finished cleaning and then followed them out of town to a large clearing where their ship had landed. It was a bit bigger than the _Kingdom Come_ , but almost all of it would probably be cargo space. True to AuDy’s word, no-one seemed to be on board as they gave Cassander a cursory tour. “The bridge,” they said (it was tiny; no copilot’s seat). “The common area” (too small to do much in the way of common activities). “Cargo hold one” (significantly larger than the common area, but cramped because it was so full). “This is where your supplies are. Wait a moment.”

AuDy picked their way through stacks of crates until they seemed to find what they were looking for, and then bent down to pick up a small box. Someone had scrawled on it, in thick blue marker, _CASS. T. B._ Not AuDy. AuDy had terrible handwriting. They straightened up, but didn’t turn to come back to the door yet.

“For most of the time you knew me, I didn’t know what I was,” said AuDy. “My consciousness was a mystery. It was almost a letdown when I realized the only reason for it was that I had wanted to forget what I was. In a way I wanted to forget that I was conscious, and I botched it. But I’m no longer a Divine. There’s not a trace of Discovery in my systems, even when I link to the Mesh.”

Cassander waited, feeling obscurely trapped by the small space and the force of AuDy’s presence. The door was closed behind them, they noticed, and they were very aware of their heartbeat. Which was stupid. There was no reason to be afraid of AuDy. But it felt like they were about to ask for something, and the weight of that expectation was something Cassander hadn’t had to hold in years. “…So?” they finally croaked.

“Absolutely nothing,” said AuDy. They turned and started back toward Cassander. “Existence is utterly meaningless, I was a fool to ever try to make meaning of it, and I smuggle because it’s what makes me the most comfortable. I’m still trying to work out where you fit in.”

“Comfort in familiarity?” suggested Cassander, trying for an airy tone.

“That in itself is troubling,” said AuDy, and handed them the box.

Cassander’s heart was trying to crawl up out of their mouth; they did their best to swallow it before saying, “Get your crew to come over to my house for dinner. They eat, right? I want to meet them. We have a captain in common, after all.”

AuDy stood in silence for a moment, and then their arm came slowly up to grip Cassander’s shoulder. “We’ll be by at nineteen hundred.”

Cassander left feeling like something important had happened, but what precisely it was eluded their understanding.

 

They’d been expecting a pretty strange crew, since not just anyone would take a robot who wasn’t supposed to be sentient for a captain. And they weren’t disappointed. AuDy only had two mech pilots, (no hackers or surgeons) one of whom was a Kalliopean rat woman and the other a human who didn’t talk at all, which Cassander supposed made them a perfect match for AuDy. The Kalliopean, Pekkanen, boisterously shook Cassander’s hand when she came in, and with a flourish placed some kind of strong-smelling plant on the table by the door.

“It’s hein,” she said. “It’s an herb, great for cooking. You made noodles? Hey, Etta, Fish Prince made noodles!”

“I’m not a prince,” Cassander corrected, desperately hoping she hadn’t been spreading that around town.

“Captain’s Fish Date, whatever,” said Pekkanen, disinterested. “Whatever gets me noodles the fastest. What did you _put_ in these?”

“Sea hare ink. It’s got these tiny things in it called opalines, so that’s why it sort of shines gold. You’re supposed to make it with squid ink, but they don’t have squid on Glimmer, so I made do.” Pekkanen didn’t seem to care all that much, but Etta smiled politely at Cassander and took their hand. Cassander was hoping Etta had some kind of assistive communication device, because otherwise dinner was going to be a very awkward 1.5-person conversation.

They did, as it turned out, a holographic display that let them manipulate pictures and fragments of video. Cassander was sure Mako would have loved it, maybe even Mako as he was now. They found out a bit about how interplanetary shipping regulations were enforced these days; they found out that AuDy’s ship was called, for some reason, the _Deep Space Pine_ ; they found out that there was a greenhouse aboard the _Pine_ that AuDy had mysteriously neglected to show them; they found out that Pekkanen was an avid cook but had rather strange taste that she had eventually infected Etta with. Etta, in turn, tried to convince Cassander to join the crew, but they found that they had had quite enough of space, and had to decline.

Eventually Cassander broke out the wine because fuck it, this situation was weird and they didn’t want to be sober even if AuDy’s crew were pretty fun. Future Cassander could be the one to deal with whatever embarrassment became necessary.  For now it was fine to slump into AuDy’s side and laugh at Pekkanen’s most disgusting jokes until eventually Etta fell asleep and had to be lain down in Cassander’s front room. This was AuDy’s job (as captain?) and so they stood up, steadying Cassander when they started to tip over, before picking up Etta and carrying them. Pekkanen stumbled over and curled into Etta’s side, leaving Cassander feeling decidedly alone. Sober, they tried not to mind, but it was _hard_ now. They’d never been like anyone in Plaidest, and no-one from offworld ever came to visit. They missed Aria, they missed the easy physicality they could have with her, they missed fencing and punching each other on the shoulder and honestly maybe they should just get cosmetic surgery so they could live on Counterweight or wherever without being recognized because they were _sick_ of living alone.

Any amount of this internal monologue might have gotten externalized into AuDy’s shoulder at some point during the night. In the morning Cassander would be glad and anxious in equal measure about not remembering, but for now a _solid_ body, if not a warm one, would have to do.

“Thanks for coming, AuDy,” Cassander definitely mumbled, before drifting off to sleep.

“No problem,” they thought they remembered AuDy replying.

 

The next day they left their house standing empty except for a sign on the front door: I’M NEVER COMING BACK. YOU CAN HAVE THE HOUSE IF YOU WANT. They were betting nobody would. AuDy was kind enough to agree to take them to Kalliope, and now they found themself hanging around the greenhouse most of the time, taking notes on what kinds of plants AuDy had collected. AuDy was in there too, more often than not, even though the _Pine_ didn’t have autopilot and only ran if the acceleration joystick was taped down. This was a truly stupid way to run an FTL drive, but Cassander couldn’t bring themself to mind, since AuDy’s company was 80% of what kept them sane. Ish. Sane-ish. The whole trip felt like a surreal replay of the journey to September eight years ago, which wasn’t helping anything.

Two months later AuDy dropped them off on Kalliope with a small loan, but Cassander quickly realized that they weren’t truly gone. Obviously, AuDy/Discovery was on Kalliope, as it was on every planet with an established Mesh. It was a lot more solicitous than AuDy, although that might be because it had greater power: Cassander never had to call a cab, for instance, and it was perhaps too easy to find a cheap flat to rent. To find a job. To find a surgeon who didn’t have any questions about who Cassander was. And then, once their face was an unrecognizable mix of Euanthe’s and an old childhood friend’s, the _Deep Space Pine_ appeared at just the perfect time, like AuDy had been keeping track of their progress remotely. It was pretty much exactly 50/50 creepy and sweet, but Cassander really wanted it to be sweet, so they decided on that. “Thanks for everything,” they said into their empty apartment, on the day they were to leave. “I’ll see you soon. I’ll see you on Counterweight.”

 

They made AuDy come to dinner at Aria and Jacqui’s house. Or rather, Aria made them come once she heard they were still alive. The first thing she did was punch AuDy with her metal hand, and then she hugged them. Cassander got a little crushed by Jacqui and then hugged Aria, which they realized they’d been anticipating for several years. They held on a little too long, and sighed, and mumbled, “Fuck vacations. Not for me.”

Aria laughed and held them out at arms’ length. “Maybe if you taught AuDy to duel. Your new face is cute, by the way.” She patted them on the cheek, and smiled. “Come in, come in. Hey, you should have given us more notice. I bet we could have gotten Mako over here. He’s a real weirdo these days. He’s gotten really secret-agent-y. It’s fine, I guess.”

Cassander just soaked themself in the evening. Getting drunk with Aria and Jacqui (and “with” AuDy) was much more pleasant than getting drunk with a couple of strangers and an existential crisis. By the end of the night Cassander had lost miserably at arm wrestling (to Jacqui) and fencing (to Aria, who made fun of them for not keeping in practice), and agreed to work in the Vanguard under Executive Joie-Green.

Worth leaving the ocean behind, though who knew? Maybe they could go on a normal vacation some time.

**Author's Note:**

> It turns out “being in love” just means “oh it’s that person who reminds me that I deserve so much better except I can’t figure out how to get it, fuck.” Romance = melancholia, right? Anyway this was supposed to be Cass/AuDy but it just turned out Cass<>Aria. That’s how it is sometimes. Or is it a dissertation on how before you can romance a hunky parking robot you have to have stable friendships? I didn't actually write the part where they romance AuDy! Just the heart-pounding terror and confusion part of romance. THAT'S HOW IT IS SOMETIMES.


End file.
